by Jerri Rivers

Created on: October 20, 2007

America's literary tradition began with the Puritans of New England, followed by the Enlightenment thinkers, the Transcendentalists, and the Romantics, but these writers merely imitated the trends of their British counterparts. Mark Twain was the first truly authentic American writer. Twain with his Midwestern humor and local color writing was the first to write in a style that set him apart from British writers. In a sense he sets the standard and truly defines American literature. But Twain is not the only great writer that America has produced. For example, Edgar Alan Poe, the father of the short story, had the ability to horrify and thrill his audience, and his writing is still an inspiration to many modern horror writers. The twentieth century marked the height of American literature. It was dominated by brilliant writers like William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The century also ushered in a Southern literary renaissance led by Alice Walker, Harper Lee, Flannery O'Connor, and Eudora Welty.

Though it is young in comparison to other nations, America has a rich cultural and literary tradition. However, in recent years, the popularity and the quality of American literature has been on the decline. Several reasons can be cited for this decline:

1. Decline of Reading in America - Today we have so many entertainment choices, from music to television and movies, to video games and the internet. I personally have hundreds of books I would like to read, and yet I find myself constantly glued to the television or the computer. In our time, not only has the love of reading and the importance of reading slipped away from many of us, but sometimes our fast paced lifestyles leave us exhausted, and at the end of the day, reading a book and actually having to think about something, takes a back seat to watching a movie, where, with no effort at all on our part, the sights and sounds of the story are right in front of us.

2. Popular Fiction Today some our best selling authors are John Grisham, Stephen King, and Nicholas Sparks. These guys are talented and write a good story, but they are not classic novelists of the canonical tradition. It does not take much thought or effort to read their stories. Also, much of their writing is formulaic. If we were to take any two stories written by a popular fiction writer of today, and compared them, in most cases the stories would not be all that different at the core.

3. The Tough World of Publishing The publishing

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